


Grey Turns to Black

by tartpants



Category: Death Note, Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note: Another Note
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, BDSM mention, Bathtub foreplay, Car Chase, Fluff and Angst, Hand Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Multiple Orgasms, Presumed Dead, Prostate Massage, Rimming, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-22 17:19:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8293741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tartpants/pseuds/tartpants
Summary: Almost nothing gets to L Lawliet -- he wears his armor too well, swallows speed to blot out everything but the case. But when an accident, a gun-shot, and piss-poor timing leave L with the impression that B is dead, it's going to take all of B's most careful efforts to put L back together again.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sybilius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sybilius/gifts).



> This is not part of the "Black Beats and Low Leads" canon, but it's definitely representative of my characterization of L in that series, as well as Sybilius' characterization of B. So consider this something that could very well happen to them, under similar circumstances! As such, I've gifted it to Sybilius, who writes the B who is so near and dear to my heart. For anyone interested, you can read more in the Black Beats and Low Leads series here:
> 
> http://archiveofourown.org/series/510031
> 
> This is also partially a song fic; inspiration is "Mercy" by IAMX:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7IYmiwHPHc

 

 

_ Mercy - when I melt in the kiss by the words and the whispers you sing me _

_ Mercy - I'm frail in the kill by submission and will that you bring me _

_ Mercy - when I'm nothing but ego you slap me to let go and sleep free _

_ Now I sleep free _

 

_ You're my toy box, you're my memories _

_ When I smell your skin, you just make my whole world weep _

_ I'm at your feet, I'm at your feet _

 

_ Mercy - when the grey turns to black and the wave's on my back, you make me smile _

_ Mercy - is the trauma no martyr you crush into pleasure and downtown _

_ Mercy - it's the shining of you that just breaks me in two like a lifeline _

_ You're my lifeline _

 

_ I'm the idiot to your poetry _

_ When you burn, you bleach _

_ Everything and all I need is at your feet _

_ Is at your feet _

 

_ Mercy - are the licks and the lips of temptation, just tricks, not for playing _

_ Mercy - are you the camera suck, gun slut to headphone, fuck holes in my being _

_ Mercy - are you everything which puts the sex into bitch, or just faking, do you fake it? _

 

_ So I celebrate your chemistry _

_ If you bond with me _

_ I could make your whole world sweet _

_ I'm on my knees _

 

~~“Mercy,” by IAMX~~

 

  
  


* * *

 

Beyond wakes up stretched out on metal with the smell of motor oil in his nose. An agonizing, burning pain shoots through his shoulder when he rolls onto his side --  _ fuck _ \-- and the day’s events come rushing back. He’d been on the bike, Lawliet trailing him in the Crown Vic, when Chambers’ lackey fired a Smith and Wesson from the window of the delivery van. B swerved, but too late -- the bullet grazed his shoulder. After that single burst of agony all went black, and so here he is, trapped in what he suspects is the back of that very same delivery van.

The vehicle is immobile, the engine quiet, and B has a headache that suggests that Chambers’ men tried to drug him. Too bad for them that drugs have never done B a snort of good. Caffeine doesn’t do a thing for him, and even the nicotine he smokes is more because he likes the filthy taste, the way the cigarette feels perched between his knuckles. He fishes out a lighter from his jeans pocket and checks his surroundings. Except for a few dirty tarps, the back of the delivery van is empty. 

He stands up and tests his limbs carefully. The leather he wears is shredded to shit, but aside from the bullet graze he seems to be in one piece. Those Chambers’ fuckers snagged his desert eagle, but he’s still got the Kershaw knife in his boot. He flick the blade open, jimmies the delivery van door open, and hops out into the moonlight. There’s no guard standing by, but Beyond hears faint voices from the nearby warehouse. The thrumming noise of oil derricks fills the air, and the sight of them bobbing on the hilltop is almost as ominous as the winged beast that rakes its claws across the night sky. As far as visions go it’s minor one, even familiar, and Beyond has no problem ducking its shadow as he darts down the dirt road and heads for the cover of desert sage brush.

He’s been walking for twenty minutes when he realizes just how far out in the middle of nowhere he is. His path is well-illuminated thanks to the full moon, but the closest city light looks at least five or six miles away. At least it’s night-time -- no need to worry about the heat, or slaking his thirst. 

_ But Lawliet… _

Yeah, Lawliet has got to be worried by now. He picks up the pace, wrapping his leather jacket closer around him. 

It’s nearly four hours later by the time a taxi dumps him in front of the Mirage hotel and casino, the orange-pink sunrise competing with the neon lights of the Las Vegas strip. B manages to walk smoothly through the lobby rather than stagger, waving away a drunk woman who wants him to join her at the  _ Indiana Jones _ slot machines. Somewhere between hours two and three of his trek, it occurred to him that Lawliet might be in danger, too. Chambers’ men might have shot out the tires of the Crown Vic, they might have even been interrogating Lawliet in that warehouse that B had been so eager to escape.

_ Please be here, please be here.  _ B’s hands shake when he slips the hotel key card into the panel of their deluxe tower suite. Glass shatters from somewhere inside the room when he opens the door, and he rushes inside to find Lawliet standing up oddly straight beside the desk, his beretta gripped in his hand and a broken glass at his feet, fizzy soda pooling across the tiles.

All at once, B wonders which of them looks worse, because Lawliet sure as shit looks like hell warmed over. His hair is plastered down on one side of his face and wildly mussed on the other. The circles under his eyes are so dark they might as well have been scrubbed there with charcoal. 

“B.” The syllable falls from Lawliet’s lips as he lowers the gun, setting it on the desk. “Where the fuck were you?” His tone is flat, colored with distant anger, but B isn’t fooled -- it’s the tone that Lawliet uses like a mask, damming back whatever else he might be feeling. And sure enough, as soon as the words are out Lawliet clings to the edge of the desk itself as he lowers himself into a trembling crouch. B sweeps across the distance between them and comes to his knees, both hands curling into Lawliet’s shoulders. 

“Lawliet, Lawli,” he chants. “You all right? I’m here.” When he’d last seen Lawliet he was on the fringes of coming down after a near week-long amphetamine binge, but now he looks to be up to his neck in it, panic making his eyes bulge.

“Saw you take a bullet and wipe out.” Lawliet’s voice is little more than a gravelly whisper. “By the time I got the Crown Vic turned around there was nothing there but the bike.”

“Yeah, Chambers stuffed me in that delivery van, drove me out to the desert. I got away but not with any intel.” He runs his fingers through Lawliet’s hair, the edges of it unpleasantly sticky.

“What about the bullet?’

“Grazed my shoulder. Burns like a bitch but I’ll live.” 

Two pale fingers run along B’s jaw, trembling there, and Lawliet’s pupil are wider than dimes. “I thought you were...” he falters, then slumps into B’s non-injured shoulder. “I hate not knowing.” 

Instantly, B knows what he’s referring to. Lawliet’s death date might be decades and decades from now, but B can’t see when his own life’s train comes to a screeching halt. Could be tonight, could be tomorrow. If he’s lucky, it’s ten or twenty years from now. 

“Yeah, sorry ‘bout that.” B runs his fingers down the trough of Lawliet’s spine, noting how chilled he feels even through that ever-present white tee-shirt. “Sorry to have worried you.” Sorry now, especially. Seeing Lawliet in any state of fragility is rare and terrible; B is used to being the one who’s stripped raw, bearing his fear and fury to the world in equal measure, but it’s moments like these that remind him how broken Lawliet is, only further splintered by his denial of it in the first place. “Fuck, but you’re shaking. Can’t you take a xanax or something, a benzo for the comedown?”

Lawliet’s ‘work habits’ are rarely an acceptable topic of discussion, and B takes it as a sign of how bad it is that Lawliet only curls a finger into his mouth and mumbles something about having run out. 

“A soak in the bath, then? I need to clean this graze wound, anyway. Not to mention the rest of me.”

Lawliet nods listlessly and B helps him to his feet and down the hall to the suite’s bathroom, where a sunken soaking tub and fresh, fluffy linens wait for them. L is out of his clothes in what appears to be a single shimmy, but then he’s always hated clothes, and never looks more at home than when he’s wearing nothing but skin. Now, though, he looks nearly grayish against the white porcelain tub, the muscles in his back tense as he leans over to turn on the faucet.

Inspecting his jacket under the brighter lights, B curses at the damage and tosses it into the corner. His best jacket for the last three years, and his desert eagle, too. Only Lawliet’s wide, unblinking eyes remind him that it’s a minor price to pay, considering.

Wincing as he draws his shirt overhead, B inspects the damage in the mirror. Little threads of his sage-green tee are burned into the angry wound. When he turns away, fingers at his belt buckle, he pauses at the sight of Lawliet slouched at the edge of the tub, his hand wrapped around his soft cock and his face grimly serious. 

“I need to look at you.” His ribs rise fast with his breath.

B slowly unthreads his belt from his jeans. “Alright. I’m not going anywhere.” 

Lawliet blinks almost violently at that particular choice of words. 

“I’m  _ not _ ,” B repeats, with enough defiance that Lawliet’s head droops in seeming relief, his eyes peering up to watch Beyond finish undressing, jeans dropped to the tile floor and kicked aside, boxers and socks peeled off. His feet are blistered from walking so far in stiff leather boots. 

Lawliet looks so limp and pliant, so  _ lost _ , that B loops an arm around his thin waist and helps him into the steaming water. “You stink,” he murmurs, pressing his nose into the tangles of Lawliet’s hair as he draws him closer, notching his thighs around Lawliet’s narrow hips.

“I know.” Lawliet tilts back into B’s chest. “I’m not in good shape. Don’t use it against me.” 

B knows that what he means _ is don’t make me humiliate myself anymore than I already have. Don’t make me show you just how terrified I am.  _

“I won’t. I never will.” He reaches for a washcloth, soaps it up, and runs it down the hollow of Lawliet’s chest. For the moment he ignores that Lawliet is still massaging his own penis in a fairly mindless way; it’s now swelled slightly, though that could well be from the warm water. “Come on, tip your head forward and I’ll do your hair.” 

Once they're both scrubbed and B’s taken care of his grazed wound, he drains the tub and refills it with fresh hot water, then pulls Lawliet’s limp body toward him, wrapping his arms tightly in a way that would normally either be cause for complaint or for foreplay. Lawliet’s no longer shaking, at least, so B gingerly massages his fingertips into his shoulders. “That feel okay?”

“Feels good.” Lawliet’s fingers trail up and down B’s calves. 

B pushes Lawliet’s wet hair aside and nuzzles his mouth against the back of his neck. “All I ever want is for you to feel good.” 

Shifting slightly, Lawliet half-turns his head in B’s direction. “But you don’t feel good. How much does it hurt?” 

The wound is throbbing, thanks to the vigorous scrub he gave it, but B wisely downplays. “Looks worse than it feels.” 

Lawliet grabs for his hand. “You can show me how bad it hurts.” He bends forward and curls into himself, the knobs of his spine pressing up from his spun-glass skin.

Gently tugging his hand from Lawliet’s grip, Beyond just drags him back for another embrace. He’s usually the one in this position, on his knees begging Lawliet to fuck his mouth, turning his cheek up for a slap, baring his throat to be choked and bitten. In the best of those moments the hellish visions melt away and he drifts to a safe space where Lawliet is everything to B, and B is everything to him. There’s nothing that makes him feel more alive and treasured than being Lawliet’s partner and plaything, than having Lawliet claim every single last inch of him, bind him up in ropes and chains with no hope of escape.

He squeezes Lawliet tighter, knowing how pressure can be a comfort, and Lawliet whimpers a little, rocking his ass into B’s hips. 

“Shh, I know.” B dips his hand between Lawliet’s thighs, taking his half-hard cock in a slow, lazy grip. He lick a trail down Lawliet’s wet shoulder and strokes him to a full erection, strokes him until Lawliet is utterly limp in his arms, his eyelids fluttering with pleasure. When B cups his balls, carefully rolling them between his fingers, Lawliet moans a little and shifts so that he can thread his arm beneath his leg. Through the crystal-clear water, B watches as Lawliet’s long middle finger probes into his own asshole, moving in a slow, thrusting circle before adding another. 

“Will you?” Lawliet asks, his voice breaking slightly as he rocks against his fingers. 

B’s own cock is rock hard against Lawliet’s back, and he wants nothing more than to bury himself in Lawliet, to get in so deep that neither of them can tell where the other ends and begins.

“I didn’t know if you’d be back. You can’t leave again, I don’t want to find another note, I --” Lawliet’s started to babble, mistaking B’s deep sigh for hesitation rather than arousal.

“Stop.” B heaves them both out onto the edge of the tub, lifting Lawliet’s wet hair out of his eyes so that he can press a rough kiss to his mouth. Lawliet’s lips part and his tongue hungrily sweeps past B’s teeth, sucking hard at his lower lip. Moments later his legs are clamped around B’s waist, cock pressed between their bodies and dripping both bathwater and precum. Before they both tumble back into the tub and crack their skulls open, B manages to gets them out into the suite and onto the long, curving sofa, where he folds Lawliet’s body over the plush arm and drops to his knees, tongue parting his ass and flicking against the tight opening. Lawliet moans and rubs his cock against the sofa arm, the muscles in his forearms tight and ropey as he bends himself over and widens his stance even more. 

By the time B has four fingers inside him, Lawliet is gasping into the sofa cushion. 

“Do you want to come like this?” B trails the fingers of his left hand down the side of Lawliet’s rib-cage. 

“Yes -- no.” Lawliet’s words are garbled. “I want you to do it inside me.” 

B breathes out a little laugh. “Makes two of us.” He pulls out his fingers and replaces it with the head of his cock, lightly teasing the spot he’s just opened.

It’s not going to fix anything, it’s not going to stop death’s march. But for now it doesn’t hurt.

He eases his hips forward, pushing himself into Lawliet until he’s fully sheathed inside of him, his body draped against Lawliet’s back. Sucking on a strand of Lawliet’s still-damp hair, he flexes his cock, rocking in small, circular movements to the rhythm of Lawliet’s huffing breaths, knowing that he’s hit the right spot when the huffing breath turns into a gasp. B straightens up then, pressing down on the small of Lawliet’s back so that his pelvis is mashed against the sofa arm, knowing that the pressure from both directions will make the sensations that much stronger.

“Oh god, oh fuck,” Lawliet rasps, letting loose a torrent of curses that Beyond rarely hears from him. It’s erotic as fuck, but B bites down on his lip and focuses on making Lawliet respond.  _ I’m going to make you feel so good.  _ He’s been on the other side of this, knows what is to feel wave after warm wave of pleasure lap all the way from toenails to scalp. Lawliet nearly yelps when he trails his fingernails down his back, his entire body a livewire of sensation. In time, the noises he makes are so painfully needy, the clenching of his muscles so telling, that Beyond lifts him away from the sofa a few inches With several slow and deep rolls of his hips, he watches as Lawliet shoots all over the cushions, sighs as his own body quakes with Lawliet’s violent trembling.

He could stop now, let Lawliet rest. Instead, he keeps rocking and massaging, coaxing Lawliet through a long series of dry, multiple orgasms that have him gripping Beyond’s fingers so hard he’s surprised they don’t crack. 

“Can’t --” Lawliet gasps after nearly shouting when Beyond grazes his nipples, writhing with over-sensitivity. “Don’t want to stop but -- can’t take anymore.” 

Beyond smiles a little and finally withdraws, stroking at his cock until his own spunk joins Lawliet’s on the cushions. It doesn’t take much more than the sight of Lawliet himself, slumped against the arm of the sofa and looking glazed with bliss and thoroughly fucked. 

Later, in bed, B gives Lawliet tiny sips of coca-cola and smokes a cigarette, passing it over when Lawliet’s spidery fingers beckon. “Thinking you were dead was bad,” Lawliet studies the cigarette’s glowing ember. “But finding out you were alive almost made it worth it.” 

“Hey,” B mock-protests, giving Lawliet a nudge. It makes him burst out in a smoky cloud of laugher, then roll over and poke the cigarette between B’s lips.

“Teasing,” he says, giving his tiniest, most heartbreaking smile before flopping down on the pillows and rolling over onto his side.

B finger-combs the top of Lawliet’s hair and smiles a resigned smile. The armor is back on again, but that’s okay. It’s normal -- it’s what he expected. 

Lord knows we all need something to hold us together.

* * *

 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks and I hope you enjoyed! 
> 
> Please please leave a comment. ;)


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